


Wake to Find Her Gone

by Raynidreams



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen, New Caprica
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 07:24:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/pseuds/Raynidreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam first person POV, just after Kara has been kidnapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake to Find Her Gone

**Author's Note:**

> A reworked section of an old fic.

**  
**

"Kara? Kara? Galen, is she here?"

The ache numbed by adrenaline fled as soon as I stopped speaking.  My chest constricting and banding tight like I was trying to breathe under water: like I was trying to drag in air through a needle thin straw. All I could do was concentrate on fighting this pressure; drawing breaths in. Experiencing with it long and strangled moments of pain and weightlessness.  The blackness surging through my body, whispering how it would be easier to die here on this damp, woven floor in the sight of the gods than to keep on struggling. But fear for her made me try. For if I didn't find her, then who would?  And: O _h, Gods! Was she even alive to be found?_  The mist reached further, wrapping around my vision, allowing me to delude myself into praying that this was all some drug or illness induced hallucination. That I'd truly wake at any moment to find her beside me. To see her hair spread out over my pillow; feel her lean body warm against mine and see that soft smile or angry flash in her eye. Each morning such a surprise for I never knew what the dawn would bring with her - it was why I loved her so much.

It was good to sink into the muddled memories and darkness.

Breaths later and I could hear muffled words buzzing in my ears long before any of the words made sense. Surfacing, I found myself looking at Galen and at several others' feet; staring up at the now roughened civilians I'd lived with for the last year or so. They all looked tired and careworn, entrenched as we'd become in the mud and despondency of this harsh place.

It only now that I realised how our friendships had mainly been based on her military past, showing how like had bonded with like on this cold new world.

"Easy man, come on breathe through it. Catch your breath... that's it."

Galen was crouched before me with concern in his dark eyes. That and a darker shadow of despair lurking within their depths. I hunched further in as the unwelcome sounds from beyond the flimsy security of the temple tent walls hit my ears and began to also compute.

_Cylons._

The insect pitched hum as raiders swung by overhead was more frequent now; followed by the metallic clang of centurions stamping upon the rotting gangplanks--the wooden and grate paths the minuscule two inch separation of the mud from the city.

All of this wasn't a delusion brought on by fever, this was real. It was happening.

Smooth hands gently circled my arched shoulders and straining back. And I glimpsed up at the owner of the hands recognising Ellen Tigh; then at the hands holding my head aiming to ease it back from my want to curl up in a ball, to find Saul Tigh himself. He was not wearing his uniform. His timing to join us down here couldn't have been worse.

"I'm good," I struggled to gasp and just about managed to make it into sitting position, supported by the others.

"Hell, when Starbuck mentioned you were sick, I thought it was her over-reacting. You look terrible," Tigh said. I twisted and grasped at his arm.

"You've seen her? Where is she?"

"Last time I saw her, I think she was heading to swallow her pride and talk to Lee."

"Lee?" I repeated. Confusion hit me like a blow; why had she gone to Pegasus?

"Said you needed medicine; told her the Commander was hoarding some for the pilots. Said for her to forget whatever it was that had happened between them and to ask him. He'd do it for her... whatever bug has been up their joint asses for this last year."

Relief flooded through me. I'd heard as I'd stumbled here that the fleet and battlestars had jumped.  It meant that the cylon didn't have her:  _thank frak for that._  Not that her being with Lee was top of my favourite places for her to be, but it was a million times better than what I'd feared.

"Thank the gods, at least she's not stuck here," inside telling myself that if she was out there, then she'd find a way to come get us; me. She'd done it before, and my pain in the ass wife would do it again. She was one helluva rescuer.

"No, you don't understand. She just called him. Used the section four Raptor station. You know the pilots would never stop her making a direct call. Sh..."

"Did you see her leave? Did the ship leave when they appeared?" I interrupted frantically.

"No, it was too late for that. I ran with Cally to get there, wanted to get her away..." Galen drew my attention to his heavily pregnant wife who clutched at her belly in a vain attempt to protect the unborn child from whatever was about to take place. "But when I got there the Captain said it was too late and with no ammunition... she was right. It was pointless to try," he finished bleakly.

"Even with her flying, you'd have been easy targets for those bastards, Chief," Tigh consoled him.

"Aye, Colonel." Strain peppered the words.

Listening to them, I wondered when it was in the short time since the cylons had returned that the civilian titles of: 'Kara', 'Saul' and 'Galen' had suddenly been replaced with Captain, Colonel and Chief. Then it dawned on me. We were at war again and the official military was not here. We were all alone and all that was left. The huge battlestars were gone and it was up to us now to carry on.

"Where did she go?" I forced out, drawing them back to me.

"She said," he sighed. "She said to  _'Fight 'em until we can't'_. We watched the ships, counting how many arrived, observing the centurions move. She then said to collect the Colonel, Duck and any former  _Galactica_  personnel on the ground and to meet here. She wanted to check that you were safe first and then she was going to return. We decided not to wait to discuss things, but she's been gone a while.  We sent someone after her, Sam. But I'm sure she's fine. If anyone can look after themselves..."

"No, no, no, NO!" I could see the stunned looks on their faces at my response. They did not expect this from Kara's mild mannered, Pyramid playing (former resistance fighter), husband.

"He came for her, knocked me out. The cylon... the one she questioned."

"Leoben?" Saul looked strange, his mouth open and eyes too intense. It made me wonder what I don't know about Kara's encounter with the cylon. She'd always been a bit cagey about the experience. His picture had first been shown to me on  _Galactica_  after people had begun asking about what I knew, about what I'd witnessed of the remodelling of Caprica by the cylons. They'd wanted to know about what models were there and about what they'd been doing. People had mentioned Kara's involvement with the rugged and supposedly discerning model. They'd whispered that she'd tortured him, been changed by him.  I wasn't shocked. I knew that she was capable of violence and to what level. That she'd done as ordered hadn't surprised me. What had was the void which came into her face whenever the episode or he was mentioned. About that whenever I'd asked her about it, she'd picked a fight.

Commotion disturbed my thoughts when the opening to the temple was thrust aside. The former President of the Colonies and her aid entering.

"I hear the ex-Captain Thrace called a meeting," the dark haired woman announced and smiled.  The expression not clearing the fear from her face. She then appeared puzzled as she looked around, not finding the someone she’d expected to see.

"Leoben came for her," I said softly.

Her head tilted to the side a fraction of a section after most peoples would have. The President always shifting as if the next move of her body was carefully planned and judged appropriate before she took it.

"He stood there, said he was looking for her and then just smiled... I don't remember anything else. When I came around, the place was a mess and there was a cloth which stank of chloroform."

Laura Roslin pursed her lips and eyes. It was often hard to tell what the former politician was thinking behind that composed mask.  The men around me, however, were easy to read.  They looked grim. I could tell from their faces that my conclusion about the situation wasn't wrong.  _He'd taken her._

"Duck, go. Find that kid we sent after Starbuck. Ask anyone—someone has to have seen something. Maybe we can catch him..." Duck nodded his head and then ducked out of my line of vision.

"Anders. We're gonna find her but..."

"Don't frakking  _but_  me!" I shouted weakly, struggling up to my knees. Not since that first realisation on Caprica that I was on my own as a leader had I felt this powerless.

"That cylon, he seemed pretty interested in her before. When she questioned him, he guessed her call sign and other things about her. From what I got from the Admiral... he managed to frak with her head pretty bad," Saul continued, appearing uncomfortable.

"What are you saying? Huh?" I felt furious, wanting to strike out at the older man.

"He's saying that Leoben's probably been planning this for a while. I don't know why—revenge maybe? But I saw them together, the way he watched Kara. She tried to help him. Tried to stop me from killing him," the former President's voice went distant. "And when he put his hand up to the glass of the airlock in the end and she met it…" She looked aside, seeming to run out of words; her eyes to briefly meet those of the XO, "I'm saying that he knows who she is, and who she's important to."

Despite what my wife sometimes says, I'm not an idiot.

"If we don't find them now... then she's gone," I said for her.

Duck's bright red hair reappeared by the tent flap and with him a kid in his early teens. I recognised him from the Pyramid court. He'd once shyly told me that he'd been a C-Bucks fan at school on Caprica. Though I wasn't sure these days if he watched the court more for me or the appearance of Kara whom his pubescent hormones seemed to have latched onto like a limpet.

"Tell 'em kid," Duck encouraged, gently pushing the lad forward.

"I went to your tent," he nodded to me. "People were running everywhere and crying. No one else was looking. They were too scared of the line of toasters walking from out of the Raiders. But I saw a man come out. A cylon. He was carrying a body wrapped up, it was her: Starbuck. I knew because her hair was falling out. He just took her and no one else paid any attention but me." His young voice, just breaking into adulthood, became even scratchier. 'I followed him. He took her to the Raider. It left. I didn't know what to do, I'm sorry." He looked miserable. I know how he felt.

"Not your fault kid." The words sounded oddly hollow, as if they hadn't come from me.

 _''Citizens of New Caprica. This is your president, Gaius Baltar"_ The voice broke into us from over the city’s speaker system.  Baltar did not sound so full of his usual slime-ball, carping, oiliness; in fact he sounded broken, afraid.  _"A tre...'_  he paused as if someone else was speaking to him, or speaking  _for_  him,  _"A tremendous moment in the history of our peoples has been achieved... an alliance. A peaceful co-existan..."_  I stopped listening.  A roaring having started up in my head which had nothing to do with pneumonia. It was anger, pure and simple.

Under the blasts of the horns, I think only Tyrol and Tigh heard me when I vowed, "I'm getting her back, even if I have to blow the frakkin' hell outta New Caprica to do it. She's coming back."

Tigh gave off a little nasty snigger. "Good plan. Then how about we get the frak off this planet?" he added.

"So say we all," Galen joined in, meeting my eyes over the din of people moving and planning. Ellen put her hand to my shoulder and I watched with interest as Tory looked towards the four of us as she linked her arm through Laura's, leading the former President over to our new resistance.  
  
 _So say we all_ , I repeated silently as I looked at them.   _So say we all._


End file.
